Trevor Davidson has everything going for him. He’s just moved out on his own with three friends, and he’s landed a job as music director at a large Boston church. He has high hopes for marrying his long-term girlfriend and settling into a comfortable, devout lifestyle.

Andre Cole has spent the past few years throwing himself into a dead-end job at a Cape Cod-based call center. When an opportunity to move back to Boston arises, Andre believes it will be the do-over he needs to put his past behind him.

A chance meeting in a club on New Year’s Eve brings Trevor and Andre together for a brief but steamy encounter. Both assuming that’s the end of it, they are unexpectedly thrown back into each other’s lives when Trevor’s church hires Andre for their website design. While Andre is content at first to move on, Trevor’s conflicted feelings bubble over into his songwriting. Before he can stop it, his ode to Andre becomes an inadvertent Christian radio hit.

Unfortunately for Trevor, he isn’t the only one who knows the song’s hidden meaning. Someone has leaked the story and upended Trevor’s life. In order to put the pieces back together, he needs to learn to be honest with his girlfriend, with Andre, and especially with himself.

Pages or Words: 85,000 words/270 pages

Categories: Bisexual, Contemporary,
Polyamory

Excerpt:

A sliver of light and the door thumping shut
alerted him to the presence of someone else. His hands stopped moving, hovering
over the keyboard. He looked up to see Pastor Bret standing at the back of the
aud.

Trevor jumped, his face flaming, and he was glad
for the dim light hiding the red flush he was sure marked his cheeks. “Uh…hi?”
he squawked out.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Pastor Bret said.
“The song is fantastic. You’ve been holding out on us, acting like you didn’t
have anything big for the recording. Where’ve you been hiding that one?”

“Uh huh. Well, I’d like to see you finish up
your new song so we can use it. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“It’s about done, but—” He coughed, stalling
while he worked out what to say to Bret to put him off. “I was thinking about
changing some of the words, though. It’s not—I mean, it doesn’t specifically
say God or Jesus, and it probably needs some other fixes. You know, so it
sounds more…spiritual.” Trevor gritted his teeth in frustration as the
inspiration for the song rose to the forefront of his mind.

Bret looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. Can you
play it for me?”

All the blood which had previously rushed to
Trevor’s face drained away, and sweat trickled down his neck to his collar.
“I—”

Oh, God, help me! Trevor prayed. “Okay,”
he heard himself say, even though he’d really meant to say, No way in hell.

He played the opening chords and began to sing,
quietly at first and then with more confidence. “You touch my heart…”

He immersed himself in the song and in the
memories he’d drawn on to write it. It didn’t matter what it was about; he was
perfectly capable of making it sound like a love song to his God. He kept his
gaze trained on the chord sheet in front of him, not daring to look Bret in the
eye just in case. When he was through, he let the note fade away and closed his
eyes. He didn’t want to see Bret’s reaction.

It took a moment, but Bret finally broke the
silence. “Wonderful. I wouldn’t change a thing. When we have a thousand members
all singing this together, they’ll all know who they’re singing it for.”

A.
M. Leibowitz is a queer spouse, parent, feminist, and book-lover falling
somewhere on the Geek-Nerd Spectrum. Ze keeps warm through the long, cold
western New York winters by writing about life, relationships, hope, and
happy-for-now endings. In between noveling and editing, ze blogs coffee-fueled,
quirky commentary on faith, culture, writing, books, and hir family.